What Lies Beneath
by esantin
Summary: (Finally completed, yay!) Everyone knows Nerima is weird. That's what makes Ranma 1/2 so interesting, right? Well, up the weirdness level by a factor of several hundred and you just might find out what lies beneath it all.
1. Separatism Is A Form Of Rebellion

Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma ½. I'll be lucky if the real owners don't kill me for this, actually…

***

**_Chapter One_**

_Hissssssss… _

Ranma woke with a start, one hand coming up reflexively to touch the spot of pain at the base of his neck. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, fast and strongly; each beat echoed in his ears. He could feel a thin sheen of sweat forming on his hands.

_Did I have a nightmare? _He couldn't remember any dreams, but that didn't necessarily mean anything; he'd often forgotten dreams. But he'd usually remembered that he'd had them… he had no such memory this time. He looked around the dark room carefully, wondering if something in the real world had disturbed him, but there was nothing. His senses, as sensitive as a cat's whiskers, – he shivered at the metaphor - detected nothing. All was peaceful. 

Shaking his head, he laid back down to go to sleep. Surprisingly, it came quickly.

***  
  


When he woke up that morning, the memory had faded and grown fuzzy, and he assumed it had been a dream. Yawning, he stretched and headed towards the bathroom to get ready, leaving the oversleeping panda behind in the room.

Once he was washed and dressed, everything felt normal again, and he actually found himself looking forward to the day. It had gotten off to a good start, at least, with his father oversleeping; Ranma had noticed that he was more likely to do that if he slept as a human rather than in his cursed form. Ranma had never understood why the old man liked to sleep as a panda so often – but then again, he had never really cared. As long as he didn't have to acquire the habit himself, it was fine.

He walked downstairs, noticing that he was the first one up. That wasn't unusual; he was usually one of the first ones up anyway, it was just the crack-of-dawn spars that made him constantly late in the morning.

Kasumi seemed a bit surprised to see him up. "Oh, good morning, Ranma," she greeted him with a pleasant smile. "Breakfast isn't quite ready yet, I hope you don't mind."

"It's okay."

Kasumi smiled and nodded again, then turned her attention back to the dining room table, which she was straightening. It only took her a few more seconds to complete the task, and then she headed back into the kitchen.

Ranma blinked as Kasumi passed him. _What was that… _he had suddenly been reminded of his dream. Ignoring it, he absently rubbed his sweaty hands off on his pants and turned on the television. Anything to fill the silence.

It wasn't long before the others awoke and he had to turn the TV off, though. But he had other things on his mind, this time. The feeling that he had had earlier came back. With a vengeance. It seemed everyone caused some sort of reaction with him… he sensed something… just like with Kasumi, just like his… dream. 

But everyone else acted normally. The flurry of emotion and activity unnerved him now, rather that just seeming normal. He tried his best to ignore it, but that proved impossible – he could hardly hold a pair of chopsticks to eat with; it seemed that he had barely wiped the cold sweat off his palms before his hands were coated again. 

He had managed, with some care, to hold a mug long enough to sip some tea. His attitude was earning him some weird comments, but he heard them as if they were part of a conversation that a group of strangers was having. Suddenly the mug slipped; it was all he could do not to drop it. 

"P-chan!" Akane exclaimed. He heard that one, and looked up just in time to see Akane stand and rush past him – causing more of the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end – to pick up her pet, where he had apparently entered the room. Ranma turned. His danger sense was flaring like he could hardly remember it doing so before; he wondered if Ryouga was in a particularly bad mood, although his cursed form wasn't a threat. 

The cup fell, and shattered, from his nerveless fingers at what he saw.

P-chan had indeed shown up. But it wasn't the P-chan that Ranma remembered. Instead, it was a pig-shaped… robot. There was no other word for it. It gleamed metallic silver, and its eyes glowed bright green. Cords of wiring were visible at its  joints when it moved, taking a step forward and lifting its head slightly to greet Akane. She didn't act as if she noticed.

But that wasn't what elicited a reaction from Ranma so much as the fact that Ryouga, human Ryouga, stood behind the automation. His eyes were dead and his body limp, but he mimicked the motions of the 'pig' somehow, the movement not seeming natural. 

What caused Ranma to suddenly faint was the fact that he could see the back yard, albeit a little dimmed and dark, right through Ryouga's translucent body.

***  
  


~Mordain


	2. An Ally, In A Form Or Fashion

Disclaimer: Still a nope on the 'owning' thing. If you actually think that's going to change, you probably believe that what going on in this story is the truth in real life. Not that that's a bad thing. Nope.

Note: I'm confusing. Yay! 'nother short chapter that doesn't explain a single thing, coming right up!

***

**_Chapter Two_**

The sudden shock of being immersed in cold water woke him up. He came to the surface of the koi pond, sputtering and furiously blinking the stinging water out of his eyes. "You didn't have to do *that*!" he protested, the voice coming out in the high tone characteristic of his cursed form.

It didn't usually come from about a foot to his left, though. 

Slowly, so as to lessen the trauma of what he would see, he turned and looked at the source of the voice. He wasn't entirely unprepared to see a robot girl, a mocking replica of his girl form, standing there, but it still nearly made him faint again. He pulled himself out of the pond, never taking his eyes off his 'double'. It did the same, but when he sat heavily on the ground to think it wandered independently back to the table and started eating. It talked to the others as if it actually were Ranma – and none of them seemed to notice the difference. He looked at himself. Soaked with cold water. Male. Of course.

Ranma did a double take, looking back at the family. They all looked like ghosts, as insubstantial as the shade of Ryouga that he had seen standing behind his cursed doppelganger. 

Wait. 

The form of Ryouga was the only person that looked solid this time, other than the robots that Ranma didn't count. Other than his listless movements to mimic the motions of his cursed form, though, he didn't seem alive. But he was opaque. Ranma examined himself again – yes, he was opaque, and solid as least to himself. It was only slightly reassuring. 

Uneasily he walked closer to the happily dining family, and tentatively reached one hand out to try to touch the nearest phantasmal Tendo, who happened to be Nabiki. His hand passed right through her back without the slightest resistance. She gave no sign that she had noticed him. There wasn't anything other than the visual clue to indicate that anything was there other than air, not even some supernatural temperature or aura. Ranma didn't even feel strangely nervous when he came near to them, like he had before – they were nothing. Existing merely for eyes and ears, nothing more. He could hear them talk, but although there was no difference in what their voices sounded like, they were as insubstantial as the people looked.

Emboldened by his lack of fear of the translucent people, he walked around them, over to where the solid figure of Ryouga stood. Ryouga showed no reaction to his presence. Carefully he reached out one hand.

His hand came to rest on the lost boy's shoulder. Ranma was actually more startled by this than anything else. But Ryouga was obviously human – Ranma could feel the roughness of his clothing, the heat of his body; he even had a mild, pleasant odor. 

"Ryouga? What's going on?"

There was no answer.

"Ryouga? Talk to me!"

Still, no response.

"Damnit, Ryouga, I know you're real, stop messing around!"

Frustrated by the continuing lack of response, Ranma grabbed the boy by both shoulders and shook him violently. "I'm talking to you, you stupid pig!"

"Gah!!!"

Ryouga yelled in protest to the treatment and fell over with a loud thump. But he had spoken this time, at least, and now made some independent motions to stand up. Anger flashed in his eyes. 

"What was that for, Ranma?!"

His eyes weren't blank, and he was moving naturally. Ranma almost hugged him. "Thank god! You're normal again… you had me worried there for a while, I'll admit…"

Some of the anger was replaced by confusion. "What are you talking about?" Then he noticed the condition of all the other people in the room. He yelped and backed away in what could have been a humorous manner, but Ranma hardly felt like laughing. "What… what happened to them? Did you do this?"

"How 'n th' hell would I do *this*, Ryouga? I'm a martial artist, not a magician. Besides, look." He pointed at his android doppelganger, who was currently arguing with Akane, acting eerily similar to how Ranma himself usually did. 

Ranma slapped the other boy when, after a few seconds of staring blankly, Ryouga's eyes started to roll up in his head. It stopped him from fainting, at least. 

"Wait a second." Ryouga spoke slowly. "The last thing I remember, I was P-chan, and Akane was feeding me… does that mean…"

Ranma nodded. "Yep. I wouldn't look if I were you, unless you want to be hit again."

Ryouga looked sick. "No thanks."

There was silence, other than the distant chattering of the family, for a while. Then Ranma noticed Kasumi bringing in a kettle of hot water and heading towards the android Ranma-chan with it. He spoke quickly. "If I disappear when she changes me back, I'll leave here as fast as I can. Follow me and we'll talk again, oka-" he was cut off by abruptly vanishing.

Ryouga watched with an odd cold feeling in the pit of his stomach as, just a split second after Ranma's abrupt disappearance, the solid android Ranma-chan turned into a phantasmal image of Ranma with the application of hot water.

***

AN: This story is fun! Any more guesses as to what's going on? Or have I just confused everyone… ^^;;; 

Ja!

~Mordain


	3. Silent Treatment

Disclaimer: I claim no legal rights to Ranma ½. The characters and settings contained in this story do not belong to me. I'm sure that this relieves everyone immensely.

Note: A rather mild chapter, actually. Wheee! This one may not be very long, but all the chapters are making themselves very short. I'd get lost trying to write more at a time at this point… oh, and a small reminder… the main category of this is Supernatural. Although that was a pretty cool theory that Shadowknight proposed. It will have Sci-Fi elements… but ff.net won't let me pick three genres. Oh well.

***

**_Chapter Three_**

The transition back was a bit of a shock, to say the least. One minute he was talking to Ryouga, while ghosts of the family played out their lives in the background; the next, he was suddenly part of that background again, and it was Ryouga who was pale and transparent.

But his first reaction to anything was to the scalding hot water that he was now drenched with. "Yeeeouch!" he exclaimed, jumping back. "Too hot!" He backed away further, trying to put the action under the pretext of cooling himself down. Truth be told, he was quite possibly more frightened than he had been before in his entire life. 

"Honestly, Ranma, you are such a baby sometimes…" Akane derided him, still absently petting the metal pig she held like a pet.

Ranma just removed himself farther from them. The wraith-like Ryouga followed hesitantly, and for some reason the thought of him following was reassuring, whereas the mere presence of any of the currently 'solid' people made his hands sweat and hair stand on end. He wasn't afraid of them, though, so much as merely… creeped out.  
"I'm gonna… um… go… now…" 

"But we don't have to leave for another half…" Ranma, not hearing, jumped over the wall surrounding the backyard and ran. "…hour." Akane finished.

"He's acting even weirder than normal, today." Nabiki commented. 

"Oh dear, he forgot his school bag…" Kasumi said, holding up said item. "Akane, would you…" 

"I'm not leaving early just to follow him around." Akane said forcefully. "I'll take it with me when I leave, though. He just better have a good reason for running off…"

***  
  


Ranma ran until he found the small patch of woods behind the high school, Ryouga close behind and not getting lost for a change. 

"What the hell do I do now?" he wondered aloud, as much to vent frustration as to elicit an answer. Not that there was anyone around who could or would answer. He looked at the phantasmal Ryouga, who didn't move. "Well, buddy, it seems that you're the only other one aware of this…" 

Ryouga didn't answer.

"Hey, didja hear me?" He waved a hand in front of the ghost's face. "Hello? Oh shit, don't tell be that you're zoned out again…" 

No response. Ranma thought for a moment, then bellowed, "Snap out of it!"

Finally, Ryouga moved, even it was only a blink. After another pause, he looked up, slowly, at Ranma, and moved his lips as if he were speaking. Ranma heard nothing, and he couldn't lip-read well enough to make out more than his name.

"I can't hear you."

A bit of annoyance flashed over Ryouga's face, and he lifted one arm to point at the ground around Ranma's feet. 

You can't see it? he mouthed, slowly enough so Ranma could decipher the words.  
  


"See what?"

Look at your feet.

Confused, Ranma looked down, but there was nothing there. "What? Is there something there?"

It's that ****** thing. Ranma couldn't decipher the middle of the phrase.

"It's what? I didn't understand."

Your girl form.

"The robot?!" Ranma jumped back. He still couldn't see anything, but if that… thing… was there…

Ryouga shook his head. It's not… active. It followed you.

"So it tags along with me until I get splashed with cold water. Then it becomes real, and I… go away. But I was always in control, before, when I was a girl. Wouldn't I have noticed if my body was some weird robot?"

Ryouga shrugged. I don't know. I've never noticed anything.  
  


"Somehow I don't think that we were supposed to."

Ryouga looked at him curiously. 

"Well, it's pretty obvious that Jusenkyou's not what it seems. /Someone/ must have built the robots to be our cursed forms."

I guess. But who?

"The guide? The Amazons?"

Ryouga looked doubtful.

"Okay, so maybe not."

Aliens?

Ranma laughed. "Maybe! But it seems pretty clear that we have to go back to China."

How?

"Good question."

***  
  


Ryouga was frustrated. And confused, but if he let that take over he wouldn't be able to do anything, so right now his dominant emotion was frustration. He'd thought that his life was already weird enough, and now most of the strangeness had been exchanged for something that was possibly weirder, and just plain creepy as well.

The female-shaped android, lifeless and dark, that seemed attached to Ranma's translucent feet didn't help calm him down, either. Of course, the fact that Ranma's feet were translucent wasn't reassuring anyway, but he could deal with that. Robots… as much as he'd seen, none of it had come close to that.

He tried speaking again. "The robot is solid to me," he said, speaking slowly and clearly so that Ranma could decipher his words. That was another frustration, but he supposed it was better than not being able to communicate at all.

It is? Ranma answered. His words were hard to make out, although they were loud and clearly audible. But Ryouga had found that unless he concentrated, he just didn't listen; his attention had a tendency to just slide away whether he wanted to hear or not. Can you pick it up?

"I don't know. I'll try…"

He attempted to touch it, and his hand met cold metal. He shivered at the feel of it. "Yeah, I can touch it at least." Gingerly, he pulled on the limp form. It was heavy, and resisted moving away from Ranma, but with some effort he was able to separate it from its host. He picked it up. It seemed a lot lighter now that it wasn't attached to Ranma anymore.

"I've got it. What should I do with it?"

I don't know.

"Well then I'm going to put it back down. I don't think there's much of a point in holding onto it."

***  
  


Ranma saw Ryouga lower the nothingness that he held cradled in his arms to the ground and shivered, knowing that the thing had reconnected itself to him, even though he felt nothing, still couldn't even see the lifeless duplicate.

"I wonder if any of the others are like this," he said idly.

Ryouga, who hadn't been listening, looked up. Something had been said… What did you say?

"I wonder if the other cursed people are like this too."

Probably.

"Maybe we should talk to the Amazons about this, then. With two of them cursed, they'd have to listen to us."

Unless they're the ones behind this.

"I'd rather not think about that possibility."

***  
  


~Mordain


	4. A Learning Experience

Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own 'em. I keep expecting a bounty to be put on my head for writing this, but so far, so good.

***

**_Chapter Four_**

You're still going to school? Even without any sound Ranma could pick up the incredulous tone in Ryouga's voice.

"If I don't they'll ask me why, and I don't think I could tell the truth – at least not without being committed."

Will you be able to act normally enough not to get asked questions anyway?

Ranma looked confused for a moment, not understanding. His lip-reading wasn't perfect, although he was getting better. "I'll have to, won't I."

And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

"I dunno. Go to the Nekohanten, see what…" Ranma finally noticed the dirty look he was getting from the highly irritated phantom. "Oh. Right." Then he brightened. "Well, you don't have to worry much about getting lost while you're like that, unless that little pig thing has the same problem. I'll just pour a little hot water and – poof!"

He just got another dirty look. If it's all the same, I'd rather not risk it.

"So you're going to follow me around more? And you think I'm going to be able to act normally with a… whatever you are at the moment following me around?"

You're acting more normally around me than you did around the… 'real' people.

Now it was Ranma's turn to glare. "I'll be just *fine*, thank you."

***  
  


Akane handed him his schoolbag. Actually, what she did was more similar to tossing it unto his desk before taking her own seat, but he got the bag. "You were in a hurry this morning," she remarked.   
  


"Yeah."

Akane tilted her head curiously. "You've been acting weird lately."

"I've been… thinking."

"Thinking?" Suddenly Akane got a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. "About what?" _It couldn't be…_

"A bunch of things."

While Akane worried, Ranma was doing his best to act nonchalantly. He'd managed to enter the school alright, by walking quickly past everyone else who was there early, making a beeline for the empty classroom. Ryouga leaned against the window, half-sitting on the sill, watching. _This is gonna be a long day… wish I could make a bet with someone that he'll wimp out before then end of it_.

The other students filtered into the class slowly. He tried his best to ignore them, and most of them didn't pay any particular attention to him – not that he noticed any that they might give anyway. Hiroshi and Daisuke, however were a different story. 

"So here you are, Ranma!" 

"Man, you musta gotten here pretty early, we didn't see you."

Ranma braced himself, and looked up. His two friends looked normal as ever. And they were being still, sitting at their desks, which helped. He seemed to only freak out when they moved, or were very close to him. "Hi guys."

Hiroshi and Daisuke exchanged a glance. 

"Are you feeling sick or something?"

"Nah, I'm fine." 

The pair looked at each other again. "You sure?"

"What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?"

"No one-"

Daisuke was interrupted by Miss Hinako – in child form – making her usual grand entrance into the room. Rainbows and flowers seemed to dance around her face as she announced, "Alright boys and girls, we're all going to do lots of learning today!" She giggled, and gave a v-sign to the class before going 'stern' and warning them against delinquency.

Luckily she couldn't see Ryouga, or she probably would have chided him for gagging at the display of cuteness.  

Ranma was grateful for the interruption and turned his attention to the teacher with such determination that Hiroshi and Daisuke were now even more positive that something weird was going on. And that they were being left out. They hated that.

Despite the young state of the teacher, she actually managed to keep her attention on the lesson – well, when she wasn't distracted by a manga or a game or a pretty color of chalk – better than she usually could. She never saw a student doing something that would give her an excuse to drain their chi so she could transform into her adult form, even. She kept expecting Ranma to do something, but the boy was unusually well behaved, not doing anything even when she didn't seem to be paying attention. She toyed with the idea of draining him for being sneaky about something, but kept forgetting. 

Then there was the matter of that weird chi that was in the room, yet didn't belong to any of the students. No one noticed the strange looks that the teacher gave the window on several occasions, but she did, always certain that /something/ was there yet never seeing anything. Ryouga grew worried, but didn't dare go anywhere.

***  
  


Ranma managed to get through the class well enough. He started acting legitimately normal again, almost able to forget or at least ignore what had happened that morning; the nervousness he felt around everybody and the sweating palm effect went away. If it weren't for the spectral Ryouga lounging against the window, he would perhaps have forgotten.

When Miss Hinako suddenly yelled out the phrase that every student had learned to hate, he cringed with the rest of the class, knowing that he was the most likely target.

"Happo Five-Yen Satsu!"

She grew, filling out her previously loose dress in a manner that would make every male student in the classroom drool as soon as they had figured out who the poor sap had been to provide the energy for her transformation. But they looked around in confusion, because no one was thin, wrinkled, and half-dead from having all the energy drained out of their body.

"She's pointing at the window," someone finally noticed.

"She got someone *outside*?"

All the students crowded around the window, trying to see whom she had caught. That wasn't normal at all, and so managed to get the interest of the class.

Ranma was the only one who could see what she had caught. Or rather, *couldn't* see, at least not any longer. Ryouga was gone. 

_Oh shit._ He barely restrained himself from saying it out loud, emitting a strangled sound in his throat instead. He looked at Miss Hinako, who was still standing, looking very confused. _She drained Ryouga! But… where'd he go?_

Ranma, unnoticed by the rest of the class that was still trying to figure out who had been the victim of their teacher, stood and walked over to said teacher. "Miss Hinako?"

She looked up at him, slowly. "Ranma – I – you – don't – delinquent! – Know – you – how, - set - but - this - she - up, - sensed - didn't - me, - you! - Ranma! - What's - what – wrong - happened? – With me?" She trailed off finally, looking exceedingly confused. Finally, she spoke again, understandably this time. "Ranma," she asked evenly, somehow managing to look totally lost and stern at the same time, "Why is my voice so weird? I don't feel so good…"

Ranma blinked. _Is it possible? Did she…? _"Ryouga?" he asked lowly, trying not to attract any more attention from the class, a few of whom had given up on the search and had noticed the strange conversation. 

"Yes, - no! Of – why - course - did - it's - you – me! - Call me that?" She stopped again, confused.

Ranma looked nervously over his shoulder. By this point the majority of the class had given up on the window thing, and was listening to the conversation with some considerable interest, mixed with puzzlement at the strange sentences their teacher was spouting. "Miss Hinako, can I talk to you in your office please?" _Ryouga please keep quiet!   
  
_

Luckily, all she did was nod, and leave the room somewhat unsteadily.

***  
  


AN: If you don't know who/what Miss Hinako is, this might not make a great deal of sense, so I'll explain here for those of you who don't get it. (note: this is the manga version of her ability. The anime one is slightly different.)

Miss Hinako is basically a chi vampire. She has two forms, those of a cute little girl and of a very beautiful grown woman. While her true age is that of the woman, her 'default' form is that of the child. In order to transform into an adult, she needs to suck the energy out of a living human through some round object, using her special technique. Since Japanese 5-yen coins have holes in the center, she typically uses one of those, hence the name of the technique, the "Happo 'Five-Yen' Satsu". (But any round object will work, simply by replacing the words 'five-yen' with the name of the object being used, such as 'basketball hoop'.) The person(s) caught with this is totally drained of all energy and cannot fight at all, or barely move. In both the anime and the manga, people affected like this are drawn flat and wrinkled, almost like a grape that has been turned into a raisin, for a reasonable analogy. Hinako uses up this energy rather quickly, and eventually reverts back into her chibi form. While in adult form she is very serious and rather sultry, but in child form she is immature and easily distracted by shiny objects.

Miss Hinako can also release the energy that she has sucked from her victims in the form of a massive chi-attack. It is called the "Happo No-Yen Coin Return", and is released by her forming a circle with her hands and shooting the blast through that focus. This, combined with her vampiric abilities, make her quite likely the most powerful character in the series. Even Ranma never manages to defeat her conclusively.

(Historic note: The word 'Happo' in the name of her attacks is not coincidence. When she was young, Hinako was a sickly child, and often in the hospital. Happosai took 'pity' on the girl and changed her metabolism into what it is now through the use of a series of pressure points over a long period of time. His ultimate goal, however, was to have the unsuspecting little girl incapacitate the nurses at the hospital so that he could steal their underwear.)

  
Ja!

~Mordain 


	5. Desperately Seeking Ryouga

Disclaimer: Nopers. I don't own anything… not even the computer I'm writing this on. It would therefore be rather pointless to sue me, no?

Notes: Wow. I never expected this much to come out of this… and that I would have so much fun writing it… big thanks to everyone who reviewed! If you didn't… shame shame!

***

**_Chapter Five_**

The door closed with a remarkably final slam. He snorted. _Finally she's gone! _He would have said as much aloud, but his vocal cords weren't currently up to par for the task. 

_Finally, after so long, I'm in control again! _It was such a liberating feeling, being able to move freely. Even being able to think his own thoughts… he'd had influence before, but had been purposefully locked away, not able to do as much as he wanted except when the other consciousness that he shared the body with was blinded enough by some strong emotion – usually anger – to let him take over, even if only a miniscule amount. _Now, how the hell am I supposed to get out of here? _The doorknob was out of reach, the window was closed. _Damnit, if only I'd been able to work faster… but that programming was impossible. My god, you'd almost think that they didn't want me to be free again, wouldn't you?_

After a few more minutes of futilely trying to find a way out, he fell back on the default plan. "Let me out!" he screamed as loudly as he could, despairing the thought of being locked away in this silly girl's room for the rest of the scant time he was conscious. Unfortunately, there was no one around who understood porcine. There were, however, a few who were highly irritated by this behavior.

***  
  


She awoke for the second time to total darkness. Figured – as soon as she'd managed to wrestle control away from the complex programming that controlled her so-called 'body', she had been relegated to the darkness.

But she was patient. And while she couldn't speak, she could think, and that was enough, for the time being. She'd broken the programming. She knew she had; after all, she could think again. Now, all she had to do was wait. Then she'd be free. She relaxed, doing the mental equivalent of closing her eyes. Her airheaded associate must have finally carried out her orders, botching them as usual in the process, of course. She made a mental note to ensure that no more mistakes would be made. As soon as she had control again…

She waited.

***  
  


Miss Hinako – and Ryouga, Ranma supposed – was mercifully quiet on the walk to her office. The emotions on her face never stopped changing, flickering back and forth between one and the next too quickly for Ranma to be able to place them exactly. But the confusion never changed. He supposed he couldn't blame them.

As soon as they entered the small office, however, all that changed. The two people in his teacher's body – he was sure that that was somehow the case – started talking, all at once and out of the same mouth. They weren't even alternating words anymore; syllables maybe, but whatever it was, he couldn't understand any of it.

"Will both of you *please* *stop*!" he shouted. __

Surprisingly enough, they both did. Ranma blinked. "Look," he said slowly, "I don't know what happened. Miss Hinako, you can sense chi, I know, and somehow you must have sensed Ryouga, who was… incorporeal at the time. Along with his chi, you seem to have absorbed his consciousness as well. Ryouga, have you noticed yet that you're not in your own body?"

They both answered at once, then stopped just as quickly. Finally, after a bit of deliberation, a single voice spoke. "Of course I've noticed. Ranma, you are *so* going to die for this, I hope you know that."

Pause.

"Ranma, I don't know how you did this, but you now have detention for the rest of the school year!"

Ranma frowned. "Do you want me to help or not?"

Pause.

"Yes – yes – I suppose." Both sounded reluctant, though.

"Okay then. The first thing to do, then, is to separate you two, of course."

"Then – sounds – you – like – better – a – explain! – Plan."

Ranma didn't bother to figure out what they had said, although he was certain that sarcasm was mixed in there somewhere. "Okay. Well, the only way that I know of for Miss Hinako to expel the energy that she's gathered is through her coin return…"

She looked doubtful. "I – what's… - don't – oops – know – sorry. – If that will work, Ranma. It releases the chi as explosive power, not the sort that can be used by a living being."

"Is there any other way? We don't have much time before you use up his energy. What would happen to him then?" 

Of course, that just made them burst out into a stream of particularly schizophrenic babbling. Ryouga was angry and clearly frightened by the concept, while Hinako was desperately trying to explain and frustrated at not being able to do so. 

Ranma would have found it funny if it weren't so potentially serious. Then he smacked his forehead. "Of course. Why didn't we think of it before? All we have to do is change his cursed form back into him. Then he should go back where he belongs."

The body of Miss Hinako blinked twice as both of the consciousnesses inhabiting it absorbed the information. Then they spoke, more calmly this time. "Of course. – What are you – that is simple… - talking about? – Why didn't I – Well, as long as you – think of that? – Have a solution…"

After a second of furious mental copy/pasting, Ranma managed to figure out the gist of what the two had said. "Right. Miss Hinako, I'm leaving school early today."

"Of course. But I'm going with you. You better have a good explanation for this, or else I'll make good on that threat of detention."

"I'm not too worried about that. Let's get Ryouga back into his own body first."

***  
  


Ranma explained some of what had been going on to his teacher as they ran as fast as they could back to the Tendo Dojo. When they arrived, they split up, Ranma to find the so-called 'P-chan', and Miss Hinako/Ryouga to distract the two parents, or at the very least to pretend to give a reason for their presence.

Ranma found the little robot hiding behind a stack of clothing in the laundry room.

"C'mere, you weird little thing, I'm not gonna hurt you…" _Although I want to, and you freak me out to hell and back, I won't…_

It didn't voluntarily give itself up, but it couldn't exactly prevent the capture. Ranma lifted it up by a hind leg and held it at arms length, distastefully. "I don't know what the hell you are," he told the struggling pseudo-animal, "but whatever it is, it's time to give up." With that, he tossed the little thing unceremoniously into the furo.

There was a pause, and then the solid human form of Ryouga burst to the surface in a cloud of bubbles, smoothly rising to his feet in one graceful motion. He looked at his hands in amazement, as if pleasantly surprised to find them there.

"Ryouga? Hey buddy, you alright?" 

Ryouga looked up, and smiled darkly. "I'm better than ever. Thank you *ever* so much." He then promptly punched Ranma through the back wall of the furo room.

***  
  


~Mordain


	6. Perspective Dawnings

Disclaimer: I still don't own them. If there's someone out there who still thinks that I own them, I pity him.

AN: Hn. A chapter a day is hard. I'm probably going to slow down a bit, but if I do the chapters will get longer.

***

**_Chapter Six_**

Hinako Ninomiya knew something had happened even before she heard the commotion upstairs. So did the two adults she was talking to, because she was very obvious about it.

Now that she knew what had happened to her in the incident at school, she could tell it for herself. She could feel the weight of Ryouga's consciousness in her mind, and it wasn't exactly a pleasant sensation. It was crowded up there now, although she also had the nagging feeling that there was another place, somewhere else that he could go to have plenty of room. But for now they were crowded, so close together, actually, that when he started screaming inside her head as if his legs were being sawed off with a dull knife it overwhelmed her for a moment, making her crumple on to the ground as if she had fainted, clutching her head as if it was exploding, her entire body aching with sympathetic pain. Only when the scream abruptly cut off did she notice that she had shrunk down, taking the body of a little girl once more. 

A little girl, who couldn't control her emotions very well, but who /knew/ that something was wrong. 

"Ryouga? Ryouga? What happened? Are you alright?!?" she asked anxiously, ignoring the looks that Genma and Soun were giving her. Frantically, she dug around in her mind, looking for some trace of his consciousness. She knew that he was supposed to have gone – but somehow, she also knew that if he had gone, he was dead. Death was bad – and the dead person would be in her /head/. How'd that be for a gruesome Halloween story? 

She found him, and literally cried with relief when she felt the tiny trace of his mind, barely alive, but at least there. His chi, which had been keeping her in her adult form, was gone - he had latched on to her own energy, draining it away slowly to keep alive. He wasn't even using enough to keep conscious, much less control a body, but now she felt a new sort of panic – she didn't have very much, and even the little that he was using was enough to severely threaten her own existence. Who could she drain… 

The anti-climactic commotion from upstairs was the only thing that prevented Soun and Genma from becoming the needed targets. Her attention was, luckily for them, diverted.

"Ranma? What's going on?!?" Undoubtedly, as an adult she would have been able to retain much more poise, but as it was she was just a child, and a worried one at that. It didn't help when she saw Ranma slumped in the hallway, two broken walls showing how she had gotten there. He wasn't unconscious but was certainly hurt.

"What *happened*?!?" she cried, running to make sure he was okay.

"I happened, little girl."

A figure stepped through the holes in the wall. He looked familiar, but little Ninomiya didn't notice; she could feel his chi, and it was Ryouga's! Somehow this… person… had stolen Ryouga's energy, right from her own body! He approached her slowly, menacingly.

Instinct took over. Hinako knew how to handle a bully. First, get far enough away so that he couldn't reach you fast enough. Then:

"Good girl's exercise step one!" The small coin had slipped into her hand almost of its own accord, and the rest was just pure defensive reflex.

"Ja! Byo! Tsu! Aku! Ma!"

A series of quick movements and a blinding blast of green light later, the little girl was back in her adult form, the menacing attacker was unconscious on the floor, and Ryouga, in Hinako's mind, had been reunited with his chi and was stirring from unconsciousness.

Ranma just looked back and forth between the two. "What'd you do that for?"

"He was attacking you," she answered evenly. "That, and he had stolen your friend's energy. Why?"

"That's just Ryouga! He was pissed at me, but…" He trailed off, looking thoughtful. "Or is it…"

She looked down at the drained person. Now that she was no longer being attacked, she could spend time trying to place the face; indeed, it did seem to be that of the Hibiki boy, who she had seen once or twice. 

But even as she looked at him she could feel Ryouga stirring awake in her mind. It made sense to her – since Hibiki hadn't had a body when she had drained his chi, someone else must have been occupying it. What she couldn't figure out was why Ranma hadn't realized this yet.

"That is merely his body. His soul in still with me." _And it's getting crowded in here… _

Ryouga was conscious now, and starting to blindly grasp for control of the body he was occupying. Hinako graciously 'moved over' and let him have access to her physical senses. He radiated relief when he could hear and see again, and she was relaxed as well. He stumbled a bit when he saw the body he was in and the fact that there was another mind there with him, but he managed to calm down, remembering. She let him speak. It wasn't difficult, except restraining the impulse to speak herself. She remembered how bad it was when they both attempted to speak at once.

"Ranma? Wha- what happened?"

"Ryouga? So ya really are still there. I think that you're a bit possessed right now…" he motioned down to the body on the floor, which hadn't moved yet. Hinako wondered about that, but let Ryouga have his say first. This concerned him more than her, at the moment.

"Yeah, I'm here. I… could feel it when you put that thing in the hot water. It ripped my chi away from me, and tried to get me, too, but I couldn't leave this body." He paused, uncertain. "I don't know how…"

***  
  


Ranma was confused, not that that was unusual recently. But something especially odd was going on now – and he had no idea what it was. Even if he had been inclined to think that his teacher was lying, he couldn't – Ranma was pretty certain that it was impossible to fake the strobe-light of emotions that were constantly flying over her face; one second, she was calm and collected, the next, groggy and bewildered. The cycle repeated itself until it made anyone intently looking at her a bit seasick.

"I think I have a theory."

"Miss Hinako?" 

She nodded, looking over her shoulder as she did so. Sure enough, the two parents had followed her upstairs. "You need to get back to school, young man." She grabbed his arm and led him outside, giving him only the opportunity to pick Ryouga's body up and take it with them. 

He threw off her grasp on his shoulder as soon as they reached the street. "So what's your theory already?" he asked, a little annoyed. "Why isn't Ryouga in his own body?" He shifted the unconscious form he carried slung over his shoulder slightly. 

"I think I'm more worried about that than you right now, Ranma!"

_That's gotta be Ryouga. _It wasn't terribly difficult to tell who was speaking. The tone usually gave it away. "I know that. But you aren't the one having to lug your heavy possessed carcass around, so let teach explain what's goin' on so that we can get you outta her and back where you belong!"

Hinako/Ryouga blinked. Twice, because they were both taken by surprise by that particular statement, and the particular tone in which it had been said. 

"Well," Hinako started, meanwhile revising her opinion of Ranma, "I have studied chi at considerable length, for obvious reasons."

"Trying to cure yourself?"

"Something like that. Anyway, I have become quite well acquainted with the idea of chi, and other theories that involve or explain it." She started to walk, motioning for Ranma to follow. "Listening to your explanation of Jusenkyou curses, I can see that those who are cursed somehow acquire an additional body. Cold and hot water are the triggers in which your consciousness transfers between the two bodies. Recent events have convinced you that these cursed bodies are mechanical constructs, rather than actual living beings, which, when active, are somehow disguised as the living thing that they are supposed to resemble."

Ranma thought. "I guess that's as good an explanation of what we already know as anything," he agreed. "But what…"

"I can answer that with a single question," she answered. "Did you ever consider that, with two bodies, you could also house another soul?"

Ranma actually stopped walking for a second to think about that question. Digested it. It tasted terrible, but… "It… makes sense, I s'pose… but wouldn't we have noticed before?"

Hinako shook her head. "Not necessarily. There are – theoretically – ways of making one will subservient to another. But more importantly, this new consciousness that has taken control of Hibiki's body does not seem to have any chi of its own."

"So it's helpless."

"For now. Hibiki's body produces chi, however, so if it learns to use that, it could regain consciousness. That would likely be very difficult to do, however."

"That's such great news," Ryouga interrupted. It had to be Ryouga. "But what about the little task of getting me back into my own body? Ain't I gonna die in here if I don't leave soon?"

"Do you feel any weaker?" Hinako asked. It was weird, Ranma mused, watching her argue with herself, and funny in a way that made him wish that his teacher was back to being her normal vampiric self again. "Besides your little misadventure just now? I use up stolen chi rather quickly, I assure you you'd be feeling quite weak by now if I was using it, which I'm not."

"How does -"

"Does it /matter/, Ryouga?" Ranma interrupted. It was just one less problem to worry about if he wasn't in imminent danger of death. He said as much. Ryouga didn't seem to be happy about this, but Hinako cut off their argument. I was amazingly easy to do so when you could reduce one of them to incoherence merely by speaking.

They'd reached the park by this point, and Ranma had dumped the body he was carrying onto a bench. It's chest rose and lowered minutely in a slow, regular rhythm. Ranma presumed that it was a good thing that it was at least alive, as long as it didn't try to move any further before they wanted it to.

"As much as I hate to say this, I think we should try asking the old ghoul for help."

Ryouga and Hinako had gotten much better about talking in turn so that their responses were coherent for others besides themselves.

"Who?" 

"Cologne, the old Amazon," Ryouga explained. "Runs the Nekohanten. She'll probably know something, he's right. Whether she'll tell us without making Ranma promise to marry Shampoo is another matter."

"That wouldn't work and she knows it," Ranma interjected, feeling a little miffed. "She has just as much reason to want this figured out as I do. Shampoo's cursed, and even if she doesn't like him, Mousse is too."

"This is assuming that she's not somehow involved in it."

"I wish you wouldn't keep bringing that up…"

***  
  
~Mordian


	7. Fishline, Lifeline, Punchline

Disclaimer: Do I /have/ to do this again? Well, ok… *ahem*… I do not own Ranma ½ or any of the characters or settings contained within this work of fiction. I recognize the legal fact the Ranma belongs to Ryo- I mean, Rumiko Takahashi, Viz, and whoever else holds a little piece of paper that gives them the rights to it, and not me. (but if anyone wants to give me a birthday present… ^_^)

AN: Alternate title: Ryouga's adventures in existentialism. (I don't think that that's technically the correct usage of that term, but it sure sounds funny.)

***

**_Chapter Seven_**

Waking up was _not_ a pleasant sensation. 

Dai groaned, and slowly opened her eyes. The worst part was always the transfer. But she was philosophical about it, because hey, jobs didn't happen too often, and they paid *very* well. This one more than most, because Jusenkyou cases were the most stable, and therefore the most _un_stable when/if they finally cracked. That was the whole point of Jusenkyou, after all.

She quickly composed herself. It wouldn't do to attract attention; even if she didn't care much about this place, she was on her own. The people here could make it quite difficult for her to complete her mission, and that was the only way out she had. It was a crappy catch – but that was part of the reason why the pay was so good. And if worse came to worse, she could simply retire. It wouldn't be such a bad life.

She ran over the information she had been given in her mind. It was a bit discouraging, to look at the mess she had to resolve; luckily most of it was mere complication, her actual job was as simple as always, although it had become a double. In and out. And she was close to the target – better than the last time, when they'd landed her on the wrong continent! It was irking, how they tended to disregard 'minor' details like that. It seemed that she was the only one who took this place seriously; but then, she was the only one who had to. It had taken her two missions to understand what few others could.

Earth was as real as anything; you just had to look pretty damn close.

***  
  


Hinako mentally groaned. As if it wasn't bad enough already, having to share her own body with someone as mentally immature as the Hibiki boy… It wouldn't be so bad if the other person involved in this mess was anyone /other/ than Saotome. She somehow didn't think that Ryouga got along well with many people, but there couldn't be very many others who he got along with quite so badly as Ranma. 

They were currently arguing over whether or not to go to the Nekohanten and ask Cologne for help. Ryouga had conceded that she could probably help them – but that she wouldn't, because she was probably involved in it. Ranma kept saying that they needed to find out, and that she probably wasn't behind it.

The argument wouldn't have been so boring if it hadn't been repetitive. Neither of them managed to come up with more than perhaps two reasons to support their side, and they were missing such a large chunk of it that Hinako was a bit amazed. The teacher part of her – which was currently about half – was also disappointed, although it wasn't her student's side that the information supported. Finally she grew tired of the verbal battle – which would have escalated to a real fight under normal circumstances - and jumped in, which had the effect of making one side of the war incapable of fighting and made the other stop. Finally Ryouga shut up, and let her speak.

"Finally," she said, no small amount of exasperation reflected in her voice. "All this has been wonderful and entertaining, but did either of you think that we have no way of proving what we think is true to anyone? All that trying to get help will do for us is get us thought insane."

"I can prove it to Shampoo," Ranma said confidently. "All I have to do is wake her up, like I did Ryouga."

"And while you're off waking up Chinese amazons, did you ever think about who might be running around in your corporeal form? That is, the girl-robot? Ryouga obviously had someone wanting use of a body… are you so sure that you don't?"

Ranma was taken aback. "I… I figured that we could handle him…"

"Or her," she corrected, "given the shape of your cursed form. But in that circumstance we would be dependent on my fighting skills, and I am doubtful of my ability to drain the chi from a nonliving being. If it even has chi, instead of some sort of mechanical power core."

There was a long pause.

"Now why didn't _I _think of that?!" Ryouga exclaimed. The effect was rather comical, coming from the same mouth as the line of logic that he was admiring. Ranma actually laughed a little at it. He felt awfully tired.

"I guess you're right. So, what is your idea?"

"We have to get Ryouga his own body before we do anything."

"I thought you said that that was impossible, and he wasn't in danger if we didn't."

"Not in danger of dying. But he is in danger nonetheless. I'm surprised he can't tell already, actually. If we don't separate soon, we're going to merge. There just isn't enough room in this body for both of us."

"What are you going to do?"

Hinako rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to kill you, stop worrying. There's plenty of room. You just have to look for it."

"How?"

Hinako sighed in exasperation. "I can't explain it like this."

"Then-" suddenly he cut himself off, and stopped moving entirely.

"What were you saying?" Ranma asked when they had gone about thirty seconds without moving appreciably. He waved one hand in front her face. No reaction. "Ryouga? Miss Hinako? Oh well, I hope they can work it out…

***  
  


It would be so much easier to explain it like this, if you will just listen to me!

What does she mean? there was a palpably embarrassed pause in the shared mind of the two conversing consciousnesses. Oh.

Right. Oh, just so you know, this _isn't _a good sign.  
  


Why not?  
  


It means we're getting too close together. We're starting to share thoughts, and that's not good. We're two people, not just one, even if we are currently sharing the same body and therefore, the same physical brain. If this goes on much longer, we'll both essentially die, to become one person with the memories of us both. Do you understand?

Hinako could feel the cold wave of fear, but she wasn't sure if it was her own or Ryouga's.

He finally answered. Yeah, I understand. That's… a frightening thought. But you said there was a place somewhere…

I can't be entirely certain that there's a place. I /think/ that there's a place, I /feel/ that there's a place. But I can't take you there, I can only tell you how I think you can get there.

Ryouga gulped, or rather, out in the physical world that neither of them were quite aware of anymore, Miss Hinako's body gulped. Alright. 

Good. First of all, I /do/ have a second body. I think.

Your child form?

Right. It's the body that stopped growing when Happosai changed my metabolism and stopped the growth of my chi. But he didn't stop the potential of that growth, and when I absorb enough chi to make up for what I didn't produce for myself, I achieve that potential form. Your chi is helping me keep the potential form, and because it's attached to your consciousness, I can't… 'digest' it, so to say. But my immature form is another body, with another mind, I think… it's a totally different stage of my life. You need to go back, find the path I took to get to this larger form when I recovered your chi. It happened fairly recently, the path should be fresh.

Woah… what?

I wasn't saying that to you.

Oh. Sorry.

It's not your fault. I meant to say only a little, but you got the whole thought process and a memory with the bargain. I think we need to hurry.

Y… yeah.

Good. Well, I suppose you understand now; do you think that you can do what I said?

I can try, I suppose. I've got a good incentive.

True. And I'll try to help you. She concentrated; everything became considerably brighter, stronger, to Ryouga's mental 'senses'. He didn't know how he'd managed to get into this state, or why what was in his – no, Miss Hinako's – mind seemed real; he supposed that she had helped with that. Or maybe it was because it was still her body; once he'd stopped trying to control it there was no place for him to go other than the mind.

You're probably right, at that.

Oh. He looked around, with mental eyes, at the soft reprimand. Soon he found a warm piece of thread. It was a piece of thread, a trail of breadcrumbs, a path in the woods. It was hot at one end, cool at the other; fresh-baked at one end, stale at the other; overgrown at one end, clear at the other. Metaphors didn't work, but he settled on the string because it was least outlandish. He moved towards the hot end, somehow. Actually, he didn't move along it so much as search for the hottest part of the string. He couldn't move of course, not literally, not yet. 

The thread grew uncomfortably warm, and weird things started to happen. Strange thoughts popped into his head for no apparent reason, and he stopped, confused. Those were Miss Hinako's thoughts. He's going the wrong way! came one thought, and he jumped. Oops! he apologized furiously and searched for the cold end of the string. Naturally, if the 'heat' was caused by her consciousness, he would want to go towards the cool end, where she /wasn't/. That was important. He followed it.

The thread became cool, then cold. He kept searching for colder temperatures, even more frigid… it became less like following a thread and more like climbing fishline up an iceberg, as he pulled further and further away from where he had been, nothing keeping him going but his will. 

The thread was freezing when it suddenly expanded into a huge sphere. For a moment he was confused, then he realized that this was the unoccupied mind that he was supposed to use. With one final heave and an almost audible *snap*, Ryouga pulled the rest of himself into the empty place and filled it, rushing to take control of the space that had been allocated to him.

***  
  


He opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was something surprisingly trivial, and he managed to be remarkably philosophical about it. "Ranma," he said, not entirely aware that he was speaking out loud in the physical world, "you're taller than I remember."

***  
  


~Mordain


	8. He Says, She Says, Say Says

Disclaimer: NO! I don't own them! Will you people leave me alone already!!! ARGGGG!!!! 

*pause*

*clears throat*

*sheepishly* Well, I don't. 

Notes: I 'splain a bit. Oh and in case you've forgotten, means lip reading. Or something like that, anyway. Hmmm…

***

**_Chapter Eight_**

Ranma looked down, and down a little more. After repeating this process a few more times, he finally saw who had spoken. He had taken his attention off of the single-bodied pair awhile before, deciding that they were doing just fine on their own and there wasn't a single thing that he could do to help them anyway.

He wasn't entirely surprised to see a little girl in place of the woman who had previously been standing there. Worried, perhaps, but not surprised. What /did/ surprise him was what she said when she finally spoke.

"Ranma, you're taller than I remember."

"Huh?" was Ranma's intelligent answer to that statement. He looked at himself, even checked his size against that of the small child-like person who had spoken. He hadn't grown, not that he could tell. "What do you mean?"

She shook her head furiously, the action seeming to bring her to some semblance of sensible. "Or I guess I've gotten shorter."

"Pardon?" It was a sign of how stressed he was. Ranma hadn't even known that the word 'pardon' existed in his vocabulary; if it had, it had been quite well buried. Apparently some unearthing had been done.  

Then the little girl became quite clearly, and quite seriously, angry. She looked rather cute, actually, shaking her mini-sized fist into the sky. "Why the *hell* did I do to get stuck in the kid's body!" she yelled, the words somewhat diminishing the 'cute' aspect and raising the 'weird'. She glared at Ranma. "If you tell *anyone* about this, ever, I swear that you will not live to see five minutes after you open your mouth."

Ranma was officially weirded - again. But something managed to click anyway. "_Ryouga?_" 

She – he? – glared at him. "Who did you _think _it was?"

"Someone considerably – erm – shorter?"

Since Ryouga had yet to stop glaring at him, she could hardly glare again, so she settled for merely intensifying it into something that would eat holes through most any metal unfortunate enough to be its victim. Luckily Ranma was made of tougher stuff than most metals. Coincidently, this quality of his was currently the only reason that he hadn't died on any of a hundred previous occasions, up to and including the current one.

A few more seconds passed and Ryouga dropped the look, quite possibly out of sheer boredom with the exercise.

"Whatever."

A little more time passed. Soon the two participants in the little fracas had calmed down enough to acclimate to the new situation, something that they were getting exceedingly talented at. 

"So, where's Miss Hinako?"

"She's here."

"Here here or there here?"

Ryouga gave him the sort of look that was undoubtedly theoretically impossible with the face of a ten-year-old (or so) girl, but she managed it quite impressively nonetheless. "Here. Why, do you want to talk to her?"

"I guess so. Make sure she's alright and everything."

"Okay."

The little girl abruptly spiraled upward, body lengthening and features refining into a beautiful young woman with a clear resemblance to the little girl whose place she had taken. 

"I assure you I'm perfectly well," she said smoothly. 

Ranma remembered to breathe. "Oh. How'd you manage that?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"Ah."

There was a pause.

"So, I guess neither of you are in imminent danger anymore?"

"No."

"That's nice to know. So what do you suggest we do now?"

Hinako thought for a minute. "Well, it seems that your buddy over there is waking up. He might know something, do you think?"

"_What?_" Ranma whirled. Sure enough, the half-forgotten body of Ryouga – currently not occupied by the correct mind, though – was stirring a little, although still didn't seem to be quite awake yet.

The voice of a little girl spoke from behind him. "He's awake?" she sounded clearly eager. "I volunteer to torture the bastard thief for information…"

Ranma wondered for a moment if he'd ever get used to Ryouga speaking through the body of a child. He hoped not. "Fine, but it's your body that you'd be torturing."

That made Ryouga pause. "Hm. You're right. I doubt we can hurt it enough to make it give up any information."

"That wasn't exactly what I meant…"

The subject of the current conversation groaned and cracked its eyes open. "Where…" it croaked weakly, but the rest of whatever statement it was planning on saying was cut off by the pissed-off brown eyes of a small girl who really, *really*, hated being such.

"You… bastard…" Ryouga grabbed the body that was rightfully her own by the collar. Unfortunately, his current body couldn't pick his old one up.

"Wha… who are you?"

Ryouga's eyes narrowed, but the 'angry enough to kill' look didn't work to well with Hinako's child form. Neither did the threatening tone. Ranma shook his head. The effect was rather comical, actually.

"Let me."

Both sets of eyes turned to Ranma, who looked very stern or would have, except for the tiny smirk on his face. This was going to be *fun*. At last.

The unknown person's eyes widened as he spotted Ranma. "You!" After a moment of being frozen, he fell off the bench, landing with a loud *thump* on the ground. 

Ranma and Ryouga both blinked. That had been unexpected.

"Damnit, I told you before it was an accident! I'll pay you back, you know I can, just take me with you when you leave this wretched place!" he babbled, incoherently, for several minutes, crumpled into a little ball on the ground, not looking up.

Blink. Blink. Their eyeballs were now thoroughly moistened, at least.

"What the hell are you *talking* about? Who are you, anyway?"

That made him stop suddenly, and look up. "You… don't remember me?" his eyes narrowed. "Or… Elrii is not awake yet?" 

They exchanged a glance. "Tell us what we want to know and we won't kill you."

He looked a little taken aback by that. "That doesn't exactly answer my question."

"Well then, we're just gonna have to keep you wondering, then, won't we?" It was Ryouga who said that. The stranger looked at him, seemingly confused. 

"My name is Cei," he said at length, enunciating the word clearly. He pronounced it 'say'. He stood.

"Cei," Ranma repeated. "I would start explaining if I were you."

Cei tilted his head in a curious manner. "You're not Elrii. She would've killed me by now. How is it that she's still asleep…" he paused, thinking. "So you're that… erm… Randa? Ran…la? Ran…pa? Hm… I can't quite remember… was it… Ranka? Ranko, maybe? You seem to like ending your names with that syllable…"

"How do you… whatever. My name's Ran_m_a, not that it matters for you… now tell us everything you know. Starting with this 'Elrii'."

He laughed shortly, the sound obviously sarcastic. "Like you could understand anyway."

Ranma picked him up easily with one hand and threw him back unto the bench. "You're not in a position to argue. Start talking."

"Are you sure you're not Elrii? Trying to fool me, maybe, although I don't know what the point of that would be… anyway, I'll play along. You know I'm still weak, this body is not exactly comfortable."

"Shut up and get to the point!" Ryouga yelled.

Cei gave him a curious look. "You're that little girl who almost killed me. But you're also the so-called 'soul' that used to inhabit this body. How did you manage to make the transfer…? no matter." He laughed again. "Elrii's awake. I can sense her. So it doesn't matter what you do to me, because when she's free it won't matter anymore."

Ranma just glared at him expectantly.

He laughed again. It seemed to be a nervous reflex. "You still don't know. Elrii's the devil, to put it in mild terms that your brains can understand. She owns you, she'll take everything from you until there's nothing left but any empty shell that knows nothing but _fear_, and obedience… and she's *you*." He poked Ranma hard in the chest, making him stumble. "She'll kill you – no, worse than that, because killing will be what you will beg for. She'll make you live as she has been, as I have been. Imagine life without a life, trapped in freedom unable to even think your own thoughts because that ability has been locked away. Totally helpless…"

Ranma knocked him hard in the side of the head, pushing him back unto the grass. "So you're saying that she's living in my girl form?"

"You could say that. If you could call what she's doing living. Hell, even this isn't really living, but it's better than before."

Ranma chose to ignore that last sentence. "So you're souls that were trapped in the Jusenkyo springs? Who put you there?"

Cei lifted himself back unto the bench and sat casually, crossing his legs. He looked tired, now, the fear-inspired energy melting away and leaving nothing to replace it, literally. "Jusenkyo is merely the transfer method. It's convenient, since the springs had a myth of having weird effects on people – they just made that superstition true and the people here pretended it always had been. But the true purpose of the springs is to remove the – how do I say this – undesirable elements from _our _society and keep them safely locked away. Usually these people are criminals, evil supernatural beings, etcetera – or in my case, political dissidents." He looked disgusted. "Dozens of us… stripped of two-thirds of ourselves, left to mindlessly follow a mindless life, simply because we _protested._"

Ranma and Ryouga exchanged another glance. 

Trust him?

Not a chance in hell. But he can't do anything, at least not for now.

Ryouga didn't look happy with Ranma's unspoken opinion on the matter, and twisted her mouth into a cute little childish pout that certainly wasn't meant to look that way.

Fine. Have it your way, then.

Ranma turned back to Cei, but he had fallen asleep sitting cross-legged on the bench, chest falling and rising in a slow, steady rhythm. 

***  
  


~Mordain


	9. Rai, Cai, and... Introducing... !

Disclaimer: I never have, nor ever will be, Rumiko Takahashi. So I obviously don't own Ranma ½. Duh.

AN: A *big* thanks to everyone who reviewed this! I'm surprised and flattered that this one has gotten so many compliments… to be honest I wasn't expecting anything much to come from this… ^_^

***

**_Chapter Nine_**

Dai was annoyed. That was one thing that she had forgotten about earth in the three months since her last assignment – they didn't like you going places when they thought you shouldn't. It was definitely irritating, but they could hardly stop her from simply walking out. _She _wouldn't be the one to have to explain later. She could have waited, but despite her claims to the contrary she _didn't _want to spend the rest of her life there, at least not yet. That was a last resort, or one to consider years in the future. 

She walked to her target, wishing heartily that there was a faster method available that wouldn't alert the local authorities, but she couldn't think of anything off the top of her head other than auto theft, which had proven before to be more of a nuisance than it was worth. She made a good decision – the police in Nerima were some of the most vigilant in all of Japan, simply because they were usually bored out of their minds. Regular criminals steered clear of Nerima in general. It just wasn't worth it. 

So she walked, and was actually rather glad she did – after a while at least, when the lingering headache from her transfer had faded and she could enjoy herself a little. The air in this place smelled good – vaguely sweet, with the faint tang of ozone and enough humidity so that it wasn't stifling but she could clearly smell the water nearby. She sniffed. Canals. 

People avoided her as she walked, an intent expression on her face. That was one blessing, at least; it was always the worst when they wouldn't leave her alone. 

The two bright pinpoints of consciousness that she was following were close together, so close they blurred into one at even this close distance. She wondered about that – these two didn't exactly get along. But no matter. It just made her job easier.

***  
  


Cei wasn't happy about being woken up, but Ryouga didn't exactly feel like letting him 're'gain his – that is, Ryouga's – strength. 

Cei cracked one eye open. _Why the hell does the sun on this planet have to be so damn *bright*?_

He yawned, and promptly got kicked in the side for the effort. "Ow!" he protested. It hadn't hurt much, but he was just feeling so weak right now… this body had a lot of energy to generate before it would be at its full strength, and it didn't like having an intruder occupy it. He didn't feel like revealing /that/ little weakness to his 'captors' quite yet. Maybe later, so he could gloat… he was still amazed that they had believed that ludicrous lie of his. At least, they didn't claim to disbelieve him, and that amounted to the same thing with these two not-too-bright specimens of earthlife. 

Then *he* came closer. Cei wasn't afraid of Ranma, but he could feel /her/… he was amazed, and yet not really surprised. If anyone could gain power, even with such drastic disadvantages, it would be her. If he hadn't been so frightened he would have rejoiced. As it was, he prayed to whatever gods he could think of, be they real, fictional, or spur-of-the-moment inventions of his imagination, that she would be more pissed at their jailers than at him… 

He was kicked again. This time he could see who it was – that little girl, who was somehow also the original inhabitant of this body. He would have to find out how he had done that later. His lips curled involuntarily as he thought of all the fun ways he could get information from them.

He decided to speak, at least to avoid being kicked again. "What the hell do you *want*?" he asked grumpily.

"How stupid do you think we are?"

Cei chose not to answer that, but his mind spouted off several good responses to the question. He snickered mentally.

Ranma continued on, seemingly oblivious to his prisoner's contempt. "You're trying to regain strength by sleeping. As if we'd let you do that."

"I told you, I'm not the threat!" he protested, exaggerating the weakness in his voice. He coughed also, although that wasn't faked. _Damn! This body almost has a will of it's own! How can something without a mind resist me so much…? _But it didn't matter, he decided. Unwillingly or not, the body was gaining strength, faster and faster every second although still agonizingly slowly. "If Elrii gets free she'll kill everyone in this stinking place! Or worse! Can't you feel her? You earth-beings are so blind… stupid…" he cut himself off with another cough. "I can help you if you'll just let me rest. Look," he tried in a more reasonable tone, "I didn't _choose _to be here. Believe me, I wish I wasn't just as much as you, if not more. Just help me get free, and your friend can have this pathetic body back since he seems to like it so much. Then they'll come and take care of her again."

"They? Who?"

Cei was honestly confused. "Them. How am I supposed to know what they call themselves? Most people don't even know they exist. We call them the Jailers, but since this prison is what you consider to be the real world that term doesn't really apply for you. You'd probably think of them as…" he thought for a moment. "The Guardians, or some nonsense like that. Keeping your world safe – as a side effect of keeping us out of ours, though." 

Then he sensed it, and cursed aloud. "They're here! Two of them? I didn't even know that there /were/ two of them. We have to get out of here now!" 

"Why? You said they'd get rid of you. Sounds like a plan to me, get this mess over with."

Cei glared at Ranma. "You really are stupid, if you haven't figured out the most likely way that they'll get rid of us."

Ryouga tilted her head, confused. "I thought they would lock you guys away again. Not something I particularly want, but…"

"You idiots! If we've gotten free once we're a danger to them. They'll just kill us. By killing the bodies that we're in. No fuss, no muss, just dead. Get it?"

Ranma and Ryouga both looked shocked as they absorbed that information. They exchanged a glance.

Cei was taken aback when the little girl suddenly sprouted upward like a flower blooming on a still-motion film, ageing in the course of seconds to adulthood. He was equally surprised by the sudden vanishing – no, just diminishing – of Ryouga's consciousness as another spirit took control. She wasn't as stupid as the other two, he could tell immediately. 

"Now," she said smoothly, flipping her hair back arrogantly, "Why don't we try telling the truth this time? You may be able to fool them, but I am not in the habit of being gullible, and I know that you haven't told us more than a shred of half-truth since you first opened your mouth."

Cei blinked. This was unexpected. He didn't even know who this person was… he had some knowledge of Ranma and Ryouga, but this person was a total mystery. He chose to play it safe; after all, he hadn't been lying about one thing. "They're coming," he told her as frankly as he could manage. "I'm not sure about the killing part, but it seems damn likely to me. I don't think that there's any other way to get rid of us at this point, to be honest."

The woman examined his eyes closely, probing into the depths of his soul, it seemed. He found himself actually intimidated by her. _Who *is* she? _he wondered, impressed. She had a strength that he couldn't remember ever sensing before… Ryouga was strong, but it was all brute power; Ranma may have had that special quality but Cei could barely sense his sprit anymore, with Elrii's aura overwhelming Ranma's to Cei's senses. 

"Very well," Hinako finally agreed. Involuntarily, he let out a sigh of relief. "We'll go to my apartment, for now."

He nodded in relief. "We can't stay there for long, though. They can sense us, just like I know vaguely where they are, although distance does have an effect." There was a response to that, but he didn't hear as he concentrated for a moment. They were approaching from slightly different directions, he detected. One from the south, slowly, the other from the southwest at a considerably higher speed. He pointed northeast. "We'll have to circle that way to avoid them."

***  
  


They followed Cei out of the park. Ranma had a nagging worry about something. He just didn't trust the newcomer, he supposed; it was probably a reasonable suspicion. Ranma wondered just /what/ he had been lying about. 

"Ranma! There you are!"

He looked up. They had crossed paths with Akane, it seemed, and she didn't look pleased. In fact, she looked downright cross. "Where have you *been*?"

Ranma didn't know quite what to answer to that question. "Ummm…" 

Maybe Miss Hinako started to intervene at that point, but Ranma didn't notice; all he saw was Akane reaching behind her back. He winced and tried to remove himself from mallet range, but Akane was faster, as she usually managed to be.

It wasn't a mallet that she held pointed at his head, however, but a large, futuristic, and rather deadly-looking gun. 

***  
  


~Mordain


	10. Simply Overwhelming, Dear

Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma ½. Happy?

Notes: Chapter 10, presented here for your reading pleasure. Be prepared, we're nearing the end of this one. One or two more chapters after this, unless you force an epilogue out of me…

***

**_Chapter Ten_**

If there was one thing that Ranma was not, it was slow. Okay, so sometimes he suffered from this malady in the figuring-things-out department, but when it came to the physical type of speed, he could _move_. 

Which was a good thing, since the muzzle of the gun that Akane held was about a millimeter from his forehead and her finger was already tightening on the trigger. Even he wouldn't survive a shot from that range, he knew.

So he jumped, straight upward, his feet clearing her line of fire. 

She didn't shoot, though, somehow managing to stop applying pressure to the trigger just in time. She re-aimed, forcing Ranma to keep moving in order not to be hit.

"She's one of them!" Cei cried – or had he said that awhile before? Ranma couldn't remember; he _was_ a little busy.

"Yeah, no kidding!" Ranma retorted as he dodged. Akane still hadn't shot, however. 

"Damnit, *hold* *still*!" she shouted, trying to target Ranma. Her face was contorted into one of a strange combination of fury and pure cold calculation; she was barely recognizable anymore. 

"And let you kill me? Not likely!" Ranma speeded up. _I can't keep this up forever! Wait a sec… so why don't I just… _

It was almost laughably easy to land behind Akane and immobilize her. He was careful, grabbing her first by the waist and then, in the moment that she was too surprised to move, catching the arm that held the weapon and pressing on the right combination of pressure points and nerves to make her arm go numb. The gun slipped out from between forcedly relaxed fingers and landed with a soft *thunk* on the ground. 

Akane was still frozen, though, even when Ranma loosened his grip on her to retrieve the gun and toss it off to the sidelines. Coincidentally, it landed near Miss Hinako, who gingerly picked it up and looked at it curiously. It wasn't like any gun she had ever seen… where had it come from? 

Ranma held Akane's arms tightly behind her back, making sure she couldn't move them. She flailed and struggled, but couldn't manage to work her way free. Eventually she stopped. "You…" she uttered in a low, glutteral growl, "do not have permission to touch me."

"But apparently it's okay for you to try and kill me?"

That earned him a short, spine-chilling laugh, but no response. He tried a different approach, but didn't let go. "So who are you, anyway?"

She was silent.

"Is it your plan to kill me?"

"If it's the most expedient way, of course. Your life is nothing."

His grip tightened on her arms. Involuntarily. Honest. "I don't want to hurt you."

She didn't deign to answer again. Ranma muttered in frustration.

Meanwhile, Hinako was examining the gun, wishing that she knew more about weaponry, because this appeared to be a very odd one. It was hard to imagine where Akane – or whoever was currently occupying her body – had managed to acquire it.  

_It doesn't even look real, _she thought. _She – he – whoever – much have brought it with them, from wherever they came from. _She turned it over in her hands several times. _It doesn't even look much like a real gun… _Idly she took it by the handle and hefted it, experimentally, swinging it back and forth a little. Its weight was unbalanced, and it made a strange sound as it moved, one that was somehow familiar, yet refused to identify itself. She turned her attention away from it, to check on what was happening – she felt a flash of guilt for not paying attention to that – but the situation seemed unchanged; 'Akane' still refused to give any answers, and Ranma was clearly frustrated, yet unwilling to harm her.

Quite suddenly she felt a slight mental 'push' that she knew meant Ryouga wanted to take control. She couldn't communicate with him, although she was aware of what was going on when he was in control and assumed that the reverse was also true. Those times when she wasn't in control were weird and slightly frightening, to tell the truth. While she was thinking this, there was another push, more insistent this time. _Alright, alright… _she closed her eyes, allowing the transformation.

It was sheer bad luck that her finger happened to be lightly brushing the trigger of the item she was examining at the moment of the change. As one form replaced other and one mind came to the forefront while the other took a backseat, unpredictable things happened. In this case the event was a particularly bad one. One finger tightened around the trigger, with just enough pressure to activate it…

Ryouga had a reason for wanting to take control. He had been thinking right alongside Miss Hinako, about the weapon – in particular the strange sound that she had dismissed. _It sounded almost like…_

Thoughts became words as he took control; and since the moment of this also coincided with the unlucky event, what was intended to be a simple observation turned into a horrified half-shout instead.

"Water?!?" 

And it had been pointed directly at Ranma at the time, too…

***  
  
Ranma was disoriented suddenly. He had been concentrating on keeping their attacker – it couldn't really have been Akane – from breaking free, a more difficult task than it should have been, but also one that he could keep up for a while longer. All of his questions had been either ignored or answered so cryptically that they might as well have been. One thing was for sure, though; she was contemptuous of Ranma in the extreme, although she couldn't get free. She repeated the phrase "You don't have the right to touch me," so many times that it was starting to get on Ranma's nerves even more than the whole situation was already grating on them.

It was rather understandable that his head spun wildly when, in the middle of this, he suddenly shifted a foot to his right, and the entire world changed to every single one of his senses, including the sixth. 

It took him a moment to realize what had happened, and still wasn't entirely certain when abruptly he no longer had the leisure to think about it.

His cursed form – clearly visible now as a totally solid female-shaped robot with glowing green eyes and copper wires simulating red hair – covered the short distance between them with a single step and quite casually kicked him. It was only due to his lightening reflexes that allowed him to dodge well enough to deflect the blow to his leg. 

He took a defensive posture, but there was no second attack. Instead, the… girl… simply stood there, smirking coldly. Akane, her form split into three parts, took a position behind the android. Ranma did a double take at seeing two other, and solid, figures moving with the translucent one that was her physical body. 

What he could only assume was the real Akane lay slumped unconscious at the ghost's feet, being dragged along as if connected by an invisible rubber band. She looked rather battered and bruised, although the ghost was perfectly healthy. The third figure looked absolutely nothing like the other two. Ranma couldn't look at him very closely, but he was tall, and obviously in control of Akane's body. His eyes were dead, though – Ranma realized that this was like the beginning of the day – years ago now, seemingly – when he had first discovered the phantasmal Ryouga standing behind the robotic P-chan. He moved like a marionette, mimicking the movements of the smaller, translucent figure he stood behind. But the solid unconscious duplicate of that form belied that comparison; she was the puppet, not he.

"So finally meet, Ranma Saotome."

Ranma's attention snapped back to his robotic nearly-twin. He could hear her clearly, although the words coming from both Akane's body and Miss Hinako's slipped away from his awareness as if they were less substantial than air, and in a way they were. The events from that other world as a whole slipped away from him; the robot was the only real, currently aware thing registering on his senses right now.

"Who are you?"

She laughed, sending a shiver down Ranma's spine. The sound was far too human, containing none of the mechanical edge that her appearance insisted it should have. "I'm sure that spineless… pig… Cei has told you my name by now."

"Elrii?"

"Indeed." She made a gesture, and to Ranma's shock the two conscious figures currently symbolizing Akane's form and the soul occupying it kneeled at her feet, looking up at her adoringly. She placed one hand on Akane's head; although it was noncorporeal to Ranma apparently she perceived it as solid enough to touch. The phantom looked up at her, the expression on the two faces a mixture of admiration and fear, and spoke.

"Mistress…" the words tried to slip away too fast for Ranma to understand, but they impinged upon his mind with such force that the memory burned into his brain. It made him sick to his stomach.

"You made a mistake," was the chiding answer. "You are fortunate that you did not fail."

"Yes, mistress…" the figure crumpled further down to the ground, but was forcefully dragged back up. 

"You will be punished later," Elrii assured it. "Right now…" she turned her disturbingly robotic yet remarkably humanlike gaze back on Ranma, who had been too frozen to move. "We need to get rid of a… nuisance."

Ranma shook his head to clear it. "I won't let you just leave, and you can't defeat me."

Elrii didn't even bother to laugh at that statement. The expression on her face showed exactly how ridiculous she considered that claim to be. "You think too much of yourself. I don't need to defeat you." With one swift motion she swept down and picked up the solid unconscious figure of Akane, holding her up by one wrist as if she were a doll rather than a person. "This one is so close to death… so close… do you have any idea how small the difference is between having only your mind and having nothing at all? So little… of the three parts, the mind is the strongest, yet the most fragile. Without a body or chi it pops like a bubble… it has no substance. That's all she is… this ghost you see is merely a shell of lifeforce – and my friend here is in control of that lifeforce. You wish for her death? It will be painless…"

_Why does it always come down to Akane's life or death? I'm never in danger, it's always her… _"You'll spare her if I let you leave?"

Elrii grinned at that. "Of course not. Us leaving would kill her as well, because we would take her chi with us. We merely wished to educate you so you would realize exactly _why _she had died… and how you will do the same."

"What the hell?"

"Try and stop me." She motioned to 'Akane', and dropped the lifeless form. Her minion obligingly backed away, leaving a large open space around the two. 

"You asked for it…" Ranma attacked, moving more quickly than even he expected, yet totally in control. He could feel an unfamiliar sort of power rushing through him… he felt as if he were twice as strong as ever and faster than even he'd dreamed possible. And he was.

Unfortunately, this made absolutely no difference in the outcome of the fight - at least not the difference that he was expecting.

His flurry of punches connected; she hadn't even made an attempt to dodge. Her substance didn't even cause him any pain when he connected with the incredible force that he had managed, although he'd been prepared for that consequence; her body felt like flesh. The punches, ten times faster and more forceful than any amaguriken he'd done before, simply didn't affect her at all. She blinked metallic eyelids, once, but that was more for effect than a result of the sudden barrage she'd been placed under. Confused, he jumped away.

And nearly collapsed to the ground, feeling drained of more than just energy. The already translucent figures around him grew more so to his eyes, until he could barely see them; only faint echoes of his surroundings and pastel washes of color for the other people existed anymore. Even the other solid figures grew faint; only the robotic girl registered as fully real to his senses. He could hear several voices, but none of the words registered well enough for him to comprehend them.

Except for Elrii's.

"Now that was a stupid move," she told him bluntly as he collapsed further and further. "I tell you what you don't know and yet still you waste your life uselessly. Oh well," she finished philosophically, "One more life or one less in this place won't matter very much… though, that heroic, but amazingly stupid, final act of yours was rather impressive. Idiotic in the extreme, but impressive in a way…" She shook her head almost sadly. "It's pathetic, really…"

_What… the… hell? _Ranma's thoughts sounded faint even to himself as the almost invisible world faded to black, and he into unconsciousness… or was it death? His last thought, barely audible to even his own mind as he faded away, was that he sure as hell hoped it was the former… 

***  
  


~Mordain 


	11. In Steps An Angel - Ah, Who Are We Kiddi...

Disclaimer: Elrii is mine! And Cei, although I don't like him much! And Rai! And… the unnamed-minion guy! And… any other original characters ('tho there aren't any others)! But I don't own Ranma, Ryouga, Hinako, Akane, or, for that matter, any of the other Ranma ½ characters who may show up in this chapter… *cough*… so don't sue me!

AN: Ah, short and sweet. That last chapter was just too long. 

***

**_Chapter Eleven_**

Hinako's first reaction to the sudden transformation – no, disappearance, although she couldn't see anyone, and the female Ranma looked perfectly human to her eyes – was to utter a few words that she would have given detention to a student who had been stupid enough to say them in from of her. Since she wasn't currently in control of the body, though, no one heard her. Luckily.

Ryouga exclaimed a few adjectives of her own, and hers were audible, even if they did sound a bit strange coming out of the mouth of a small girl. He had no idea what to do otherwise, though. She could see what was going on perfectly well; the Ranma-chan-robot – Elrii – and the three forms of Akane were all visible to her suddenly. She had no idea why she hadn't seen them before, though…

"Are you just going to stand there?"

Ryouga nearly fell over at the unexpected voice - *his* voice. "Okay, so tell me your wonderful plan and I'll do something!"

Cei shook his head sadly. "Can't do that, I'm afraid."

Hinako 'pushed' urgently. Ryouga reluctantly turned control back to her. 

"Are you going to help her?"

Cei snorted. "I can't. She needs energy to leave, and I don't have enough of that to do anything. What I /want/ is *that*." 

Hinako suddenly found her hands empty as Cei snatched the watergun out of them. "But in that form I can get it for her!" He aimed it at himself and started to fire, only have it to snatched right back out of his hands. Cei stumbled from the sudden loss, still weakened.

"I don't think so!" Hinako snapped at him, grabbing and holding him firmly in place by his collar. "What did you mean, you can get it for her in your robotic form?"

Cei was silent. 

Hinako procured a five-yen coin and shoved it in his face. "I can still steal chi like this, you know. What do you think would happen to you if I took all of it?"

Cei's face grew panicked. "Okay, okay!" He slumped down, defeated. "The android forms have the ability to absorb chi and consciousness. It's what keeps their power core working, and to help simulate the illusion of their supposed appearance. It also lets the soul of you people transfer back and forth between bodies. If I changed I could gather up enough energy for me to leave. The android body also contains the leaving mechanism… it's only meant to receive, but it's possible to hack into it to let one escape out into the real world, to a receiver – and Elrii has one waiting I'm sure." He practically babbled the information, and then promptly looked horrified that he had let that much slip. 

The 'push' from Ryouga was so strong and unexpected that Hinako was shoved away almost involuntarily. "It can absorb chi? And soul as well?" Ryouga yelled excitedly as she fell to the ground; the change had been so abrupt that she had shrunk from the bottom up rather than the other way around like she had before. "Miss Hinako! The coin return! If that's true, then I can return back to my own body!"

The following conversation, although actually rather brief, was an interesting sight to see. For each person to speak they had to first take control of the body; it was like watching a living, schizophrenic yo-yo. But the more they traded off, the closer they were dragged back together, until one hadn't finished their sentence out loud before the other one started theirs. It was practically impossible to follow by anyone else. Cei's head was spinning even without the strain of trying to listen to them, so since the water gun was impossible to take, he backed away to look for other sources of water, keeping half an eye on what was going on as he did so. At least he was free… although weak, he was reminded when his legs suddenly buckled.

The discussion was suddenly cut off when Cei cried out suddenly. "Elrii!"

"Huh?" The current form was that of the adult Hinako. She looked over at the android, which she could see now for what it really was, in a hazy sort of way. She could also see Ranma – although something seemed to be wrong; he was slumped unmoving on the ground, far to pale even for his current state, and still fading. 

"Elrii!" Cei shouted again, waving his hands in the air. "You have enough energy now! Take me with you – oof!" He was suddenly knocked over when 'Akane' leaped and kicked him squarely in the chest. He was still conscious, although he almost wished he wasn't, the pain was so great to him in his weakened state.

"No," Elrii answered simply. "You deserve to stay here forever – do not think that I have forgotten how you betrayed me!" She showed no outward anger, but 'Akane's' face was twisted up into an expression of enough pure fury that it sufficed for both of them.

"Please!" Cei begged, only to be kicked again.

Hinako's mind whirled. "Well Ryouga, you wanted to do this – here's your chance!" It wasn't thought-out in the slightest, but rather instinct, followed by reflex. "Happo no-yen coin return!"

Suddenly all Ryouga could sense was light and wild motion as a beam of pure energy lashed out of the circle that Hinako had formed with her fingers. Light, motion; nothing but a pure rush of *being*… and… a target, a dark bull's-eye approaching at incredible speed. Not the one he'd been expecting, though, but rather the one that could accept him. 

Elrii.

***  
  


Rai watched, unnoticed, from behind a pair of tall cherry trees, not hidden so much as merely unseen; those whom she was observing were far too caught up in their little drama to notice her as she assessed the situation and came up with a solution. It was simple enough, really; the hardest part would be taking care of it fast enough for Elrii not to interfere. Then she saw her opportunity, and strolled out rather casually to do her part. First, set it up so that stupid male Ryouga wasn't killed in his suicidal jump…

***  
  


Hinako was almost relived as she shrunk back down into her chibi form, a form that was now rightfully hers once more. When the relief faded, and she became aware of the world outside again, she felt a hand on her shoulder, pressing down firmly yet carefully, as if there was a deliberateness behind it. She craned her head up and around to look, and blinked one in confusion. 

"What are you doing here?"

Nabiki Tendo – or rather, Rai, although Hinako didn't know that identity – didn't open her eyes to answer. But she did softly smile, and bring her other hand up to press one finger against her lips. "Shh…" she murmured in a voice that wasn't really a voice but more like the communications that she'd had with Ryouga before he had been relegated to her child body. She heard them clearly, though not through her ears, heard them cutting through all the noise and confusion that was going on around her.

"Shh…" Nabiki-Rai whispered once more, still smiling ever-so-slightly with a kind of amusement that Hinako didn't understand. "Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show…"

Then Hinako's senses were overwhelmed by the three bursts of rainbow light that somehow emanated from between her still-circled hands. 

***  
  


~Mordain 


	12. A Cleanup Crew Of One

Disclaimer: Nooooooooope. It. Ain't. Mine. Get over it already, and if you happen to own it, don't sue me. Clearly I don't want to be sued… I mean, that would be just stupid.

AN: So I lied. This is really an epilogue… or will probably seem like one to everyone else other than me. Eh. Live with it. I think it's a chapter. I know more about the story and what's going on than you. So it's a chapter. If I write an epilogue, it will be the epilogue. This is the twelfth chapter.

***

**_Chapter Twelve_**

It was a confusing few seconds for Ryouga. The robotic body was entirely different from the organic one, yet still strangely familiar; it was creepy to remember that this was essentially the same as every time he had been transformed into his so-called 'cursed form'. But he didn't have much time to get used to it, because he was immediately attacked by who could only be Elrii. She danced around through the electronic components, zapping him almost constantly as he tried to do the same. There was no real sense of time, trapped in existence as nothing more than a burst of energy that had been converted at least partially to electricity or alien equivalent thereof. Finally he found a place that was more familiar than the rest – the brain, he realized – and he settled there, although it was painful. Elrii wouldn't let him be; her barrage of attacks only grew worse once he settled in the brain. He was still unaware of the outside world. None of the input he was getting was like anything he had ever experienced before; it was… pure sensation, not even filtered through any senses. He didn't even /have/ any senses. It was rather familiar, though, similar to his time spent in Miss Hinako's physical body, yet different as well because of the different nature the robot form. Everything moved quickly, so very very quickly… and he wasn't bound to the brain. In fact, at first he couldn't even find that crucial portion of the body, and covered just about every other circuit in the body at least twice before finding it. 

Even moving at only a fraction of _c_, a fraction of Elrii's speed, the entire process took only a few microseconds. And once he got there, it only grew more difficult. Elrii was powerful, she was more experienced… he managed to entrench himself in the artificial brain, and gain some rudimentary sense of location and time, but that was about it. Within half a second he had barely even that much, and while he made a slight recovery two seconds later, it only prolonged the torture. It was as if he were battling every martial artist in Nerima at once – while blind, deaf, dumb, and half-paralyzed… able to operate only by some strange equivalent of the sense of smell and retaliate only by lashing blindly out while frantically trying to hang on to any sort of place at all, desperate even for the crutch that allowed him some sort of action… but he was slipping, even as he adapted, even as he learned how to fight and actually managed to counterattack occasionally…

Ten seconds after being sent in a beam of pure chi to this body – ten seconds that felt like a million times that and a millionth of it – he lost his place, and was cast out of the brain, weak and helpless, into another part where he could not interfere with Elrii.

It happened to be the body's left middle toe, but that didn't matter much. It wasn't as if he were aware of much for the five picoseconds he was there, or could do anything but begin to flex angrily before all of a sudden everything changed. The fact that he didn't notice a transition of any sort was rather impressive, as his mind was currently operating at nearly one-half of _c_, even banished as he was. 

***  
  
Hinako came to a sort of blurry awareness a few seconds after the three bursts of light came out of her fingers. She had time to notice that one had apparently struck Elrii's robotic 'Ranma-chan' body, and the second that had hit Cei – who also mysteriously dwindled down to his own robotic form, the tiny body of 'P-chan'. The third had vanished… into… the… water gun?

She was unconscious before noticing that something had affected her, as well.

The blackness was comforting, though. 

***  
  


Rai let Nabiki Tendo's hand fall gently from the child's shoulder and stumbled back a little, feeling very drained. That had taken more energy than she had expected; she supposed that she should've gotten there sooner. If Ryouga hadn't tried to transfer himself to Elrii's body, it would've been simpler… of course, Elrii might also have escaped if she hadn't been preoccupied with him at that crucial moment. 

Nabiki, still conscious at the back of their shared physical mind, commented that she wasn't surprised that the situation had been that screwed up. _If anyone could make a situation worse – no matter how bad it already was – it's Ranma. Ranma and Ryouga… worse by an infinite factor… I mean, just look at what they've already done!_

Rai shook her head to clear it and dismiss the nagging voice from her thoughts. It was irritating; almost no one was able to do that. Nabiki had a surprisingly powerful will. She looked back up at Elrii and Cei, frozen stiff and essentially unconscious courtesy of the standard lockout security program hardwired into every Jusenkyo cursed body. 

She took a moment to just look at them, and let herself feel a bit of pride. This was quite likely the most difficult job she'd ever done… those three – six actually – bursts of energy had been more complicated than they seemed. Well, five of them were complicated. The other was just what it seemed on the surface – pure energy, no programming instructions at all. To excite the molecules of a certain substance… she calmly picked up the water gun – and carried it over to the two frozen figures, but didn't shoot either of them yet. That would be too simple… besides, there was one more thing she had to do. 

"Unit Oh-Oh-Oh-One-Two-Seven-Beta, activate transfer conduit." She spoke clearly, speaking with a slight artificial inflection that the program would recognize as being her signature. Otherwise, it would pick up only the voice of Nabiki Tendo, and ignore the command.

**Active. **The word came from Elrii, but it was in a deep voice that was heard more on a subconscious level than anything else. 

She gave it its instructions, and then closed it back down again to wait until she left. Then everything would go back to normal… well, as normal as ever at least. Clean up was quick enough – the virus that Elrii's unnamed companion had released into Ranma's bloodstream during the night and attached like a radar tag to his consciousness was a remarkably clever one, but still just a virus. It was quickly blocked from both Ranma and Ryouga's consciousness, and just for good measure Akane's and Hinako's as well. 

Then she left. The final irony was that she did so through the transfer mechanisms that Elrii had so obligingly left powered up for her… 

The first thing Nabiki was aware of when she suddenly found herself in the park was that for some odd reason she had just snapped her fingers. Her first conscious thought was to kill whoever had just drenched her with hot water… and what the hell was she doing in the park with these people anyway?

***  
  
Ranma blinked. And winced in pain from a sudden, unexplainable cramp in his foot… then he blinked. And looked around, feeling groggy and disoriented for some reason. 

He spoke the name of the first person he happened to see. "Ryouga?"

The lost boy looked up at him, a bewildered expression on his face. "Ranma?" he spoke the name about as intelligently as Ranma had spoken his. 

"Delinquents! Skipping class!" the announcement nearly made Ranma – and Akane, although she hadn't spoken yet and was suffering from a splitting headache for a reason that she couldn't quite remember – jump in surprise and turn to look curiously at their teacher.

"Miss Hinako?" Ranma didn't understand. "Why are you here… and if you're here, doesn't that mean that you're skipping too?"

The little girl's face of their teacher grew even angrier. Ranma sweatdropped, almost worried about what would come next, but then suddenly she stopped glowering. "Why are we here again?"

Ranma searched his mind for that answer. It felt as if he should know… as if there were a very, very good reason for it, but one that was just out of the reach of his memory. "I dunno," he finally answered truthfully. Then he noticed Nabiki. "What are you doing here? You know why we're here?"

The middle Tendo simply shrugged, a faint smile playing around the edges of her mouth for some unfathomable reason. "Field trip?"

After a few more minutes of confused discussion, the five of them returned to the school (Ryouga followed out of unwillingness to get lost again. He was the only one to take the occurrence in stride [other than Nabiki, who didn't show any emotion in regards to it], used as he was to winding up in strange places for no apparent reason), where they were greeted with a mixed welcome. A few people asked Nabiki why she had left, and for some odd reason Akane and Ranma's class seemed very interested in their teacher's current state of mental health…

***  
  


In a remote region of China, a European traveler ignored the largely incomprehensible protests of a Chinese guide who barely knew enough English for his speaking to be recognized as an attempt at using that language and bent down to wash muddy hands in the inviting, clear waters of one of the many ponds in the valley he had found after getting separated from his tour group. The back of the spring was muddier than he thought, though, due to the recent rainstorm, and he slipped in, going completely underwater before resurfacing.

When he finally emerged, it was as a rather panicked-looking large brownish red rabbit. The guide sighed, and pulled him out, carrying him into his hut to explain yet again what he had been trying to say earlier… 

The guide had absolutely no idea of what had really happened that day, or why. It didn't matter much, though. Two weeks later, the man returned to his home, now the not-so-proud bearer of the one hundred and ninety-ninth Jusenkyo curse. It made quite the stir in his family, once they found out… his nineteen year old daughter thought it was the cutest thing she had ever seen in her life.

***

Rai marked his location in a little booklet, then in the official file that such information was recorded in, and rolled her eyes. Almost two hundred, in Jusenkyo cases alone…

Rai had to leave. Her job was over, at least until the next one. She hoped desperately never to have to deal with a Jusenkyo cursed again. _Gimmie a plain old SP anyday…_ she shivered involuntarily, startled and more than slightly disturbed by that thought. She reminded herself that she didn't like the practice of creating SPs… she didn't care for the whole idea of using a planet as a prison, but SPs… she knew why it was done, but that didn't mean that she had to agree with it. It paid well… she had to keep reminding herself of that.

*** 

~Owari 

AN: _c _is the speed of light. Roughly 300,000,000 meters/second in a vacuum… about ½ that in glass and I have no clue as to what it is in the metal that the robots are constructed of. Pretty damn fast, anyway.

    Picosecond – 0.000000000001 seconds. Not a lot of time, to say the least. A microsecond is 100000 picoseconds or so.

    Oh, and major points to anyone who figures out what SP stands for. 

Eh. Well, have fun figuring it out. Sequel, anyone?

~Mordain


End file.
